“Why, I’ll greet them like the gentlemen they are.”
He turned to Charis, and she couldn’t mistake the searching inspection he gave her. As if checking whether her mettle was up to this.
She raised her chin and sent him a straight look. She was mortally afraid, but she refused to succumb to fear. “That means tossing them in the cesspit.”
Gideon gave a curiously lighthearted laugh. She could only interpret the spark in his dark eyes as admiration. “That’s my girl.”
He waited for her to put her shoe on, then blew out the candles and gestured her toward the steps. It cut her to the bone that he still couldn’t bear to lay a hand on her. After her antics today, he’d probably never touch her again.
Oh, Charis, you’ve got more important things to worry about right now than the fact you made a fool of yourself.
Gideon collected the lantern and followed her down to the gallery. He pressed an unremarkable plaster molding near the fireplace.
“Heavens,” Charis breathed, as a secret latch clicked and what looked like an innocent section of paneling turned out to be a door. “A priest’s hole.”
“A smuggler’s stash, more like. If you stay quietly here, nobody will find you.” His voice dropped. “I give you my word I’ll keep you safe. Trust me.”
She looked into his eyes. The pain and confusion and anger that had gripped him upstairs had vanished. Instead, he looked calm and determined and, most reassuring of all, completely confident.
“I trust you.” She meant it from the depths of her soul. Odd to think she trusted him more than she’d trusted anyone since her father’s death. Even after the way he’d recoiled from her kiss.
“Good.” He gave her the lantern and watched her step into the recess. Except it wasn’t a recess at all but a landing off steps leading downward.
The door closed behind her. For a moment, stark, illogical terror gripped her. What if something happened to Gideon and Tulliver and nobody knew she was here? What if she ended up trapped behind this wall forever?
A soft knock on the panel interrupted her flight into panic. “Are you all right?”
Just the sound of Gideon’s deep voice calmed her galloping heart. She was a hopeless case to be so in love with a man who couldn’t bear her merest touch. How she wished she could help what she felt, but she’d been utterly lost from the moment he’d rescued her in Winchester.
“Yes.”
“You can listen to what happens in the drawing room if you go down a level. If you want to get out, the passage leads to a cave on the beach.”
‘Thank you.” She didn’t mean just for his reassuring information.
“It’s nothing,” he said, dismissing her gratitude as he always did.
She heard his boots click on the parquetry floor as he retreated. Then a more ominous sound. The great iron knocker on the oak front door pounded once, twice.
“Shall I send the bastards on their way?” Tulliver cracked his knuckles.
Gideon laughed softly. “No. Let’s play these hyenas the civilized way. At least at first. Show them into the drawing room and say I’ll be there presently.”
“What are your plans? The lass is safe enough where she is.”
“I think it’s about time I got some benefit from being the bloody Hero of Rangapindhi.”
Tulliver’s eyes glinted with his rare humor. “Aye, guvnor. It is about time and all.”
Downstairs, Mrs. Pollett opened the door. Gideon didn’t wait to watch her greet the arrivals but scaled the steps to his bedroom two at a time. In his heart, savage satisfaction beat like a drum.
At last his enemies would have faces. Sarah’s stepbrothers were foes he could fight and defeat. After that vile debacle in the attics, he welcomed an unambiguous purpose. The kiss changed everything between him and Sarah, yet it changed nothing. He grimly recognized that stark reality, yet still the physical aftermath lingered to torment him. His lips tingled, his skin itched, his gut cramped. And rapacious desire was a roiling eddy in his blood.
He left his unwelcome guests cooling their heels long enough to put them on edge. He had no fears they’d take it into their heads to search for Sarah on their own. Tulliver guarded the door from the hallway. So Gideon’s insouciant air as he sauntered into the drawing room twenty minutes later wasn’t entirely pretense. Sir John Hol
land, the local magistrate, turned to greet him with barely concealed relief.
“Sir John, pleased to see you.” Gideon stepped forward and forced himself to accept the middle-aged fellow’s brief handshake. His flesh crawled at the contact but with an effort, he concealed the reaction.